


Time Can Do So Much

by somehowunbroken



Series: Unchained Melody [2]
Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-16
Updated: 2011-07-16
Packaged: 2017-10-21 11:33:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,453
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/224718
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/somehowunbroken/pseuds/somehowunbroken
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It takes Jack a while to realize what's going on.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Time Can Do So Much

**Author's Note:**

> This is the sequel to [Melody, Unchained](http://archiveofourown.org/works/207070), and will make zero sense if you have not read that one. Not that, you know, it's all that much better if you have.

Jack spends a lot of time at the office, buried in his work. Rebecca’s death wasn’t an accident, and he’ll believe that until the day he dies, whether or not he can get anyone else down at the precinct to believe him. He’s got evidence – not much, but he’s working on it – and he’s got the tenacity to see this through. He’s even got the ability to ignore that tiny part of Rebecca in his head, the one telling him to go home, to take care of Steve and Mary, to be a father to the kids he has left rather than a husband to a wife who’s gone.

He’s tired when he gets home, just like he is every night, and he thinks for a spilt-second about making dinner before he realizes that it’s almost nine. Mary will have thrown something together by now, and there will be a plate in the refrigerator with that last little bit of spaghetti or grilled chicken or something else entirely. Mary’s no great cook, not like her mother, but she’s trying.

Jack sighs as he pulls the plate from the fridge. He knows that it isn’t fair to leave his kids like this; he knows he’s putting a lot on them, making them grow up too fast. Two months ago he’d never have believed he could be who he is today, but it’s not like he can deny who he’s become.

He heats up the plate – steamed vegetables and salmon, meaning it’s probably something Steve made, not Mary – and sits at the table, half thinking and half trying not to. The food is palatable if not incredibly flavorful, and Jack only ends up scraping a little bit of it into the garbage. His mind is mostly elsewhere, connecting clues and tying things together and pulling it all back apart again, which is why he doesn’t notice the package at first. In fact, he’s halfway to the study before something sparks in his mind, and he stops dead in his tracks. He frowns a little, then walks back to the garbage can and stares inside.

It’s a plain enough box, but it’s the colors that caught Jack’s attention, the blue background and simple white lettering spelling out its contents. He reaches in and retrieves the condom box, turning it over carefully in his hands. It’s empty.

Jack closes his eyes and sighs. Steve is sixteen; it’s not really a big shock to find out that he’s having sex. Everyone grieves in their own way, Jack thinks as he stares down at the box. He’s losing himself in his work; if Steve wants to distract himself with a girl, well, at least he’s not hurting anyone.

Jack buries the box back in the garbage and heads towards the study again.

-0-

There are noises coming from upstairs when Jack gets home later in the week. He would have thought that Steve and his mystery girlfriend would have noticed him pullling into the driveway, but Jack knows exactly what he’s hearing. He briefly considers going upstairs, slamming on Steve’s door, ordering him to stop – he has to think that he would have, before Rebecca died, before Steve started sleeping with a girl that he hasn’t even mentioned to his own father. Before everything went to hell. Just… before.

Jack doesn’t bother heading to the kitchen; Chin Ho had casually grabbed an extra tray when he’d gone out for food earlier, so Jack isn’t all that hungry. He’ll make a good cop, Chin Ho. He’s smart, he’s got good instincts, and he’s not afraid of the job. He settles into the study and pulls a few items out of a toolbox he’d repurposed from the garage. He’s gathering more and more evidence, and it’s not enough to build a case, but it will be eventually.

Jack spends time sifting through things, swapping pieces around on his desk, but his thoughts keep drifting to his kids. He knows he’s losing them; he can see it in the way they’re drawing into each other, how Steve makes sure Mary gets to school and Mary makes sure Steve has enough to eat. He’s had a report from the guidance counselor about how they sit together during their lunch period, how they’re pulling away from their friends, but Jack doesn’t see that as a problem, not really. His kids are tough, and as long as they have each other’s backs, Jack won’t be worried.

He does wonder, offhandedly, what Mary thinks of Steve’s new girlfriend, what they’re obviously getting up to. He has no doubt that she knows, not with how the two of them are as thick as thieves.

-0-

It’s nearly a month after Jack finds the box in the trash bin that he figures it out.

He hadn’t meant to, and there’s a part of him that wishes he could go back to not knowing. Not knowing was easier; deluding himself was easier. There’s no denying it now, though, not when he’d come home to the sounds of Steve and his girlfriend upstairs, and seen Mary leaving Steve’s room less than an hour later. He’d stood at the bottom of the stairs, processing it in a sort of stunned silence. Mary had walked to the bathroom and emerged a few minutes later, heading straight back for her brother’s room. The door had shut and locked behind her. A moment later, there had been a soft laugh that Jack had immediately pegged as _Steve’s girlfriend’s_ , but now he’s also recognizing it as Mary’s.

Steve and Mary.

Jack sinks into the sofa with a fifth of Scotch and doesn’t let himself think about anything until he’s got the first glass down. It’s only then that he brings up everything he knows – how close they’ve become since Rebecca died, how they’ve drawn away from the people they used to be friends with, how he’d found them on the couch just last week, curled under the same blanket like they haven’t done since they were eight and ten. He thinks about how Mary never seems to be around when Steve has his girlfriend over, and there’s never a note saying what friend’s house she’s at; she was always back in the morning, getting ready for school, so Jack had never pushed it, and now the reason is smacking him in the face.

Steve. And Mary.

Jack refills his tumbler and drains it again.

There’s nothing right about it. Jack should be storming up the stairs; he should rip his way into Steve’s locked room, tear them away from each other, make sure they stay separated. He should send Steve to the mainland, maybe to his aunt’s house in Philadelphia; he should get them both into counseling. He should spend more time at home so his kids don’t feel the need to sleep with each other just for some familial connection.

Instead, he pours another glass and takes a sip, thinking about it from the other point of view. They’re dealing with the sudden death of their mother; Jack himself has hardly been around since she died. It’s not unthinkable for them to turn to each other in a weak moment, and it’s not unthinkable for that to develop into something else, something more solid and maybe soothing on some level. Jack knows that Mary is on the pill; he’d found the condom box a while ago.

He circles and circles the issue in his head. There is no good solution; there is no easy answer. If he pulls them apart, one or both of them will self-destruct, but if he goes on as he has been, if he pretends he doesn’t know… Jack sighs and drains his tumbler yet again. He leans back until his head is against the cool leather of the couch and squeezes his eyes shut.

The bottom line, he thinks wearily, is that they’ve been hurt. They’ve been hurt enough, he knows, and taking the shred of comfort that they’ve managed to find seems more wrong than letting them continue what they’re doing. Jack would kill anyone else who tried to hurt his kids; there’s no way he can be the one to tear them into pieces.

They’re not hurting anyone, Jack decides as he opens his eyes and stares at the framed family picture hanging on the wall. In it, Rebecca has one arm around Steve’s shoulders and the other around Mary’s, and the three of them are laughing. Jack is standing a few feet away, hands in his pockets, smiling at his family. His life.

If this is what Steve and Mary need to keep themselves together, Jack thinks, then who is he to take it from them?


End file.
